by Kris Tualla
Nicolas wrapped Sigrid’s arm around his and led the wobbling widow out of the Hall. They climbed the stairs to the private rooms and turned down the wing where Sigrid stayed. When they reached her rooms, she tugged at Nicolas.
“Stay with me, Nick?” She looped her arms around his neck.
“No, Sigrid. I cannot.” When Nicolas pulled her arms down, the shoulder of her dress slipped revealing her right breast.
“I need to go,” he said. He turned to go but she reached for him again.
“I have always loved you, Nicky.”
He deflected her grasp and backed away from her door.
“Nick? When she’s gone?” Sigrid pleaded.
Nicolas nodded. “When she’s gone.”
April 27, 1821
Tomas rocked on his heels at the front of Akershus Fortress’s chapel. He wore a new waistcoat and frock coat, both wedding gifts from Nicolas. His hair was trimmed and he shaved that morning.
Sydney helped Maribeth with her finishing touches, and Nicolas waited to escort her down the aisle. A trio of string players began to play.
“Are you ready yet?” Nicolas stage-whispered. “Tomas is rocking a groove into the floor!”
“Will I do, ma’am?” Maribeth’s wide eyes flickered her concern as she smoothed the skirt of the gown Sydney had given her.
Sydney smiled. “You will more than do, Maribeth. You are radiant!”
Nicolas offered his arm.
“Wait! Her flowers!” Sydney scooped the bouquet of daffodils and tulips and laid it in Maribeth’s free arm.
“Now?” Nicolas arched a brow.
“Now.”
Sydney watched her tall, handsome husband walk slowly down the aisle. Her gaze traced his broad shoulders, curved buttocks, and long legs, their shape enhanced by his breeches and hose. When he turned to smile at Maribeth, Sydney’s breath caught. He was so beautiful.
Sydney brushed her tears, relieved that the ceremony would be assumed their cause. Her heart was an anchor, holding her under waves of unyielding emotion.
It was obvious to the residents of Akershus that there were but seven days left in her own marriage. She forced a trembling smile for Maribeth’s sake, and prayed to God her nightmares would not become reality.
May 3, 1821
A thin lavender line trimmed the eastern edge of the sky. Leif opened the castle’s kitchen door, slow and silent. He grabbed any food he could find and stuffed it in a saddlebag. Then he crept into the Great Hall. He paced the room, silent bare feet leaving no mark on the polished floor. He reached a sideboard and opened a drawer filled with silver.
Leif stood over the drawer, trembling. The patina of the polished silver was visible in the dim light of the banked fire. His fingers twitched. He lifted a fork. The cold, heavy metal felt good in his hand. So smooth. He put the fork in his mouth, and imagined that a chunk of roast beef with gravy slid off the tines onto his tongue. He paused.
He thought of Nicolas, and he could not do it.
Wiping the fork on his trousers, he set it carefully back in place. He closed the drawer with a resigned sigh. He padded around the room, eyes evaluating everything he saw. He leaned over another sideboard to get a better look at a candlestick. Then he saw it.
On the floor, under the sideboard and next to the wall, a metallic glint. Leif dropped on his knees, bottom in the air, cheek pressed to the boards. He stretched one thin arm under the furniture, then flattened on his belly to reach farther. His fingers brushed the object.
“Ouch! Skitt!” He retracted his hand and sucked on his bleeding finger. Leif climbed to his feet and crossed to the fireplace. He hefted the iron poker, and returned to the sideboard. Back on his stomach, he stuck the poker underneath and fished it out.
“O-o-oh,” he blew through rounded lips.
The dagger was a lady’s. Shorter than a man’s, the cut on his finger proved it was no less sharp. The stainless steel blade shone as new. The grip was crusted in jewels: sapphires, rubies and emeralds. The guard was of braided gold with rows of small round diamonds. Leif had never seen anything so elegant in all his years.
The scuff of a footstep jolted Leif to action. He jammed the dagger into the saddlebag, tripped across the floor to replace the poker, then tiptoed toward the kitchen door. He rested his ear against it, heard nothing, and pushed through it.
Outside, he sat on the stone stoop and put on the shoes he left waiting there. Head high, he walked around to the front of the castle and out the front gate. Once on the awakening streets of Christiania, he never looked back.
Chapter Twenty Nine
May 4, 1821
Christiania
Sydney stood on the pier and looked up. The mast of the ship stood over the dock like a shepherd’s staff, keeping the scurrying sailors and longshoremen herded in place. Unnerved by the thought of traveling halfway around the world alone, she held Kirstie on her hip and surreptitiously observed the other passengers. For the most part, they seemed pleasant enough.
There was just the one that gave her pause, hunched under his threadbare hooded cloak and using a crutch, he had a peg below the knee on his right leg. It was not his deformity that unnerved her, it was his stench. Somewhere between urine and rancid grease. It was obvious by wrinkled brows and kerchief-covered noses that the other passengers shared her reservations. She hoped his lodgings were not anywhere near hers.
Sydney’s heart thumped powerfully, causing her to wonder if Tomas could hear it. She attempted to appear unconcerned, yet her gaze roved without pause, searching for a blond head rising above the pulsating humanity at the dock. Everyone heard him tell her to leave, to go back to Missouri without him, but of course he would come to the ship. Why would he not?
She turned to Tomas. “Will you escort me to my cabin?”
“Yes, ma’am. I had planned to.” Tomas stood beside a smaller trunk, the one she would have with her in the stateroom.
“There they are!” Stefan pointed at the antique Viking statues tied to a wagon.
A team of draft horses strained to pull the load to the end of the pier. Six men followed and began to untie the ropes. Sydney watched in fascination as they lifted the poles the first statue rested on, three men to a side, and carried the lifeless monstrosity like pallbearers. When they carried it as far as the ship, the dockworkers tied it to a hoist. It was lifted onto the ship, and lowered through a hatch to the hold below.
“Did you see that?” Stefan bounced. The men trudged back to the wagon to repeat the process.
Sydney shook her head. “I don’t understand your father,” she said, meaning much more than the figureheads.
“Is he not coming, ma’am?” Maribeth turned her head toward town.
The weight of the statues pressed against Sydney’s chest. She lifted her chin and forced her lungs to inflate.
“Of course he will,” she whispered, unable to muster the will that full voice required.
“Shall we have you settled in?” Tomas’s kind expression nearly stripped away her tentative composure. “Come on then, Stefan. Let’s help your mamma and sister.”
Stefan walked up the gangway, followed by the newly wedded couple. Sydney followed, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other and reminding herself to breathe, as the edges of her vision blurred and spotted.
Why wasn’t he here?
Her cabin was like the ones they sailed in to Norway: a built-in bed on top of a chest of drawers, diminutive desk, one chair. A small round window opened for ventilation. Tomas set the trunk by the desk. Stefan climbed on the bed to look out the window.
“I wish I was going, too!” he said, his nose against the glass.
Tomas glanced at Sydney and cleared his throat. “You are.”
His statement prompted a trio of exclamations, and questions through three pairs of startled eyes. “Lord Hansen instructed that I was not to tell you until you were on the ship. But it is his intention that Stefan travel with you back to Missouri.”
<
br /> Sydney dropped onto the chair, her legs suddenly unable to support her. Blood roared in her ears. “But—we didn’t—what about his things?”
“I packed them last night and sent them to the ship.”
“Which trunks?”
“Lord Hansen purchased new ones. They should be in the cabin next to this one.”
Sydney handed Kirstie to Maribeth and pulled Stefan to her. “Tomas, I don’t understand.”
“Mister Hansen feels that the situation in Christiania, after he was poisoned, has grown too dangerous for Stefan. He wanted to remove the boy from harm’s way. But he did not want Sir Anders to know, in the event that the gentleman might try to retain the boy.”
“Oh,” was all she could manage.
Sydney’s mind juggled all the implications of Tomas’s revelation. Yes, it was good to remove Stefan from danger. And Nicolas would never abandon his son.
True, he had all but ignored the boy for the first six years of his life. But he had changed in the last year and a half. Nicolas was becoming a true father.
So why was he not here?
Sydney tucked Stefan’s auburn waves behind his ears. “So, he does plan to send for us after all?”
Tomas nodded. “I do believe he will.”
Maribeth’s gaze bounced from Tomas to Sydney, Stefan, and Kirstie. Her eyes welled with tears and ruddy splotches mottled her cheeks.
“You didn’t know about this?” Sydney asked.
Maribeth shook her head, and the tears spilled their dam.
Sydney stood and hugged the maid. “Thank you for everything, Maribeth. You have been such a blessing to me.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” she sniffed. “I have so much because of your kindness.”
“You have a husband who loves you, a new home in a new country, and soon you will have children of your own to care for.” Sydney wiped her eyes. Her emotions floated on the surface and she could not submerge a one of them. “You’ll not have time to miss us!”
Maribeth dabbed her nose with her embroidered wedding handkerchief.
An impudent bell warned all extraneous persons to exit the ship. After another round of hugs, Tomas and Maribeth made their way down the plank. Sydney and the children stood on the deck and waved to them. Sydney wore a brave face, but all she could think of was locking herself in her cabin and drowning in her grief.
Where was he?
Why hadn’t he come?
When the ship nudged away from the dock, Stefan began to scream.
“No! Wait! Pappa! What about Pappa?” His stricken face turned to Sydney’s. She suddenly realized that he had not had a chance to say goodbye to his father because of the secrecy of his departure.
And Nicolas was not at the pier.
“PAPPA!” he screamed. He jumped up and down, red-faced. “Stop the ship!”
Sydney knelt in front of him, her face grim, her fear consuming her. “We c-cannot stop it, Stefan.”
“We have to stop! We forgot Pappa!” His lip quivered and tears pooled in his bright blue eyes.
Could it be possible? That all of their secret planning and dangerous political games had brought her to this? Brought them to this?
Sydney took a deep breath, hating that she needed to be the one to tell him, and hating Nicolas even more for putting it on her. “It seems… that Pappa is staying here.”
“No!” His head jerked and his voice wailed over the sympathetic cries of the dock’s gulls. “He needs to come with us!”
Sydney’s chest tightened and her throat closed up. She felt light-headed; her scalp prickled and her field of vision narrowed. She leaned one hand on the deck, concentrating on the rough, damp wood to keep her senses intact.
“No, Stefan. He needs to decide about being a king.” Sydney drew a shaky breath and tightened her arm around Kirstie. The girl stared somberly at her mother and brother, lip quivering. “I believed he would come to the ship. But he did not.”
“But—but why are we going?”
“We are going back to Missouri to take care of things there.” Sydney prayed that what she said to her stepson was not a lie. “Pappa will either send for us when he is King, or he will come home to Cheltenham if he is not.”
“When?” Tears streamed unheeded down Stefan’s narrowing cheeks. By the chill against her skin, she knew they ran down hers as well.
“I—I don’t know.” Sydney tried to give him a comforting smile and failed miserably. Her arms and legs were numb. Reality seemed to exist elsewhere, and she was living squarely in a nightmare.
“I want my Pappa!” Stefan wailed and crumpled to the deck planks. “I want my Pappa…”
Sydney rolled her hips sideways and crossed her legs, cradling Kirstie. She patted and rubbed Stefan’s back while he poured out a heartbreak that only began to mirror hers.
Why, oh why, hadn’t Nicolas come?
The salt-laden wind freshened as the mountains of Norway sank inexorably into the North Sea.
After an eternity Stefan quieted, exhausted by his grief. Hers would have to wait, for the sake of Nicolas’s children.
Sydney pulled Stefan close. She felt his ribs twitch with spastic gasps and her tears dampened his hair. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her, very tightly.
“Let’s go find your cabin, shall we?” Sydney suggested, though her words seemed to come from somewhere outside her body.
Stefan ran his sleeve under his nose, his eyes bloodshot and swollen. He allowed Sydney to pull him to his feet. They climbed down the ladder to the stateroom level, Stefan lowering his sister into Sydney’s arms, before following his mamma down the slippery rungs.
They walked through the dining room to the corridor.
“Tomas said yours is the one next to mine…”
Sydney stood in the narrow passage. The door to the left of her cabin opened, and a middle-aged couple stepped out. They smiled a greeting and patted Kirstie’s curls before continuing down the hall.
“So it must be that one.” Sydney grasped the handle on the cabin door to the right of hers, and pushed.
She froze. Her mouth opened to scream, but she was unable to draw the necessary breath. The misshapen one-legged cripple, still in the rancid cloak and his crutch tossed aside, was pawing through Stefan’s trunk.
Sydney stumbled back against the wall of the corridor. Her hand waved convulsively for Stefan’s.
“Get out!” she coughed, her voice failing. “I—I shall call the captain!”
She turned to make good on her threat, but was stopped by a massive hand on her shoulder. It pulled her backward into the cabin. Sydney pushed Kirstie into Stefan’s arms and drew a breath to shout for help, when another hand clamped over her mouth.
Fear shot through her, giving her strength she didn’t possess. She fought like one gone berserk. She kicked her heels backward, searching for shin. She connected and the miscreant grunted. She bit down and tasted blood, but his hand pressed her mouth so hard, she was not sure whose.
Stefan stood rooted, mouth open. His shoulders jerked as he gasped in indecision, unsure of what to do. Kirstie began to squirm and cry, caught in the vise of his panicked grip.
“Oof—!” One of Sydney’s elbows sank into the beast’s belly. She slammed her heel into his instep and he yelped. She tried to hook her foot around his peg and knock him off balance. His arm became a band of steel, pinning her against him. He pressed his mouth to her ear.
“Min presang.”
Sydney’s efforts changed flavor instantly. She twisted to see her captor. Navy blue eyes peeked out from under the hood. “Have a care, eh?”
“Nicolas?” Relief buckled her knees and left her faint. When she sagged in his arms, he hobbled sideways and lowered her into the cabin’s tiny chair.
“Pappa?” Stefan crept forward. “Are you my Pappa?”
Nicolas threw back the hood. His blond hair stuck out everywhere. “I am indeed, son.” He shrugged the hideous cloak to the floor.
Kirstie stopped crying when she saw her father and stretched her arms toward him. Stefan set her down and squinted at Nicolas, still not sure. “What happened to your leg?”
Nicolas grinned and pulled his dirk from his belt. He cut the leather strap that held his lower right leg bent out of sight. Then he unstrapped the peg from his knee.
He straightened and stretched the abused member. “Ouch… Remind me never to become a cripple…”
He held his arms out to Stefan. The boy ran into them and Nicolas pulled him close.
“I thought we forgot you!” Stefan scolded loudly. He sniffed. “I thought you were still in the castle!”
“I’m sorry about that, son. It had to be a secret. Can you forgive me?” His words were for Stefan, but his eyes were on Sydney.
Her breath came in uneven spasms. She was furious beyond reason and relieved beyond description.
Stefan nodded and looped his arms around his father, his face tucked securely in Nicolas’s neck. Kirstie toddled to him and held up her hands. He scooped her to his shoulder and kissed her soundly.
“Are we safe?” Sydney whispered. She was shaking and felt light-headed, shattered by the whirlwind of events and the subsequent swamp of emotions.
Nicolas shook his head and gazed at her from behind his children. “Not yet. After London.”
***
“How did you ever find such an awful garment?” Sydney waved the air in front of her nose.
“It was in the stable,” Nicolas rolled it up. “What shall I do with it?”
There was no reason for him to remain disguised. Tomas would cover his absence with the story that Nicolas was indisposed with the flux. Fear of catching the disorder would keep Anders away for two to three days. Tomas assured Nicolas that he would uphold the illusion by carrying trays of tea and dry toast into the room, and dirty dishes away. By the time the truth was out, the Hansens would be more than halfway to London.
“Get it out of this cabin before it lends its stench to everything we own. Please!”